John Lennon hoped to beat Paul McCartney with 'Imagine'?

Late singer-songwriter John Lennon was reportedly obsessed with composing a song better than his former bandmate Paul McCartney's "Yesterday". He hoped his song "Imagine" would turn out to be as good as the latter's 1965 hit number.

Lennon wished to pen a better song than "Yesterday" as many fans mistakenly thought it was composed by him along with McCartney, reports dailystar.co.uk.

He came up with "Imagine" in 1971 and approached his DJ friend Howard Smith to know if the song was better than McCartney's track.

"John came to my loft and he was all excited. He said, 'I think I finally wrote a song with as good a melody as Yesterday'. 'Yesterday' drove him crazy. People would say, 'Thank you for writing 'Yesterday', a beautiful song.' He was always civil, but it drove him nuts," Mojo magazine quoted Smith as saying.

"He played it through and asked me what I thought. (I said) 'It's beautiful'. (He said) 'But is it as good as Yesterday?' (I said) 'They're impossible to compare'. So he played it again. And again. And he said, 'You'll see, it's just as good as 'Yesterday'," he added.